A question often asked, but not easily answered, with reference to the creation of animals and plants, is--What was its precise method, and to what extent is such intervention conceivable. This is, it is true, not a properly scientific question, since science can not inform us of the act of creation. Nor is it properly a theological one, since revelation appeals to our faith in the facts, without giving us much information as to the mode. It can, therefore, be answered only conjecturally, except in so far as the law or plan of creation can be inferred from what is known, either from science or revelation, as to the history of life. We may, in the first place, assume that law or plan must characterize creation. The Scriptural idea of it is not reconcilable with the supposition of a series of arbitrary acts any more than the scientific idea. The nature of these laws, as disclosed by Palaeontology, has been already considered in a preceding part of this Appendix. What we may conjecture as to the nature of the creative act itself, from a comparison of nature and revelation, may be summed up as follows: 1. If we reduce organized beings to their ultimate organisms--cells or plastids--and with Spencer and Haeckel suppose these to be farther divisible into still smaller particles or plastidules, each composed of several complex particles of albumen or protoplasm, we may suppose the primary act of creation to consist in the aggregation of molecules of albuminous matter into such plastidules bearing the same relations, as "manufactured articles," to the future cell that inorganic molecules bear to crystals, and possessing within themselves the potencies of organic forms. This is the nearest approach that we can make to the primary creative act, and its scientific basis is merely hypothetical, while revelation gives us no intimation as to any such constitution of organized matter. 2. The formulae in Genesis, "Let the land produce," and "Let the waters produce," imply some sort of mediate creation through the agency of the land and the waters, but of what sort we have no means of knowing. They include, however, the idea of the origin of the lower and humbler forms of life from material pre-existing in inorganic nature, and also the idea of the previous preparation of the land and the waters for the sustenance of the creatures produced. 3. The expression in the case of man--"out of the dust"--would seem to intimate that the human body was constituted of merely elementary matter, without any previous preparation in organic forms. It may, however, be intended merely to inform us that, while the spirit is in the image of God, the bodily frame is "of the earth earthy," and in no respect different in general nature from that of the inferior animals.